NOAA Fisheries News Releases
NEWS RELEASE
June 2, 2005
Sheela McLean
(907) 586-7032
NOAA Fisheries Service and Harborview School explore intertidal zones
NOAA Fisheries Service staff and Harborview Elementary School students and parents from Juneau, Alaska recently traveled to Juneau and Sitka beaches for marine science expeditions during extra low tides.
The students ran comparative transects from the low intertidal zone to the high intertidal zone on a beach near Juneau and on a beach near Sitka. By completing the comparative transects, the students learned differences between the intertidal environments of the saltier coastal waters compared to the inside waters.
The students identified the seaweed and organisms within string circles at 3 meter intervals along a line stretched from the water edge to the beach grass.
"The 28 fourth and fifth graders and their adult helpers were delighted with the abundance and variety of life discovered," said NOAA Fisheries biologist Melanie Brown, who helped organize the beach activities. "They have a greater appreciation of the intertidal environment and its delicate creatures."
NOAA Fisheries staff helped the students carefully peek under rocks and probe the mud for the more elusive crabs, sticklebacks, limpets, tunicates, worms, and starfish. The students gently replaced the rocks and most organisms where they were found to lessen the impact to the beach environment. Using simple field equipment provided by K Koski of the NOAA Fisheries' Auke Bay Laboratory, the students also recorded temperature, salinity, and clarity of the water.
Dr. Marnie Chapman, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Alaska joined the students in Sitka to assist in identification and to provide a better understanding of the relationships among the organisms seen. The students also helped Dr. Chapman collect information to try to solve a mystery about a break in the seaweed coverage in the mid tidal zone. Normally, seaweed covers the beach throughout the midtidal zone, but on one beach, a large area of the midtidal zone had almost no seaweed. The information gathered by the students on the location and diversity of organisms may provide clues to the absence of the seaweed.
Southeast Alaska tides can vary more than 20 feet in one day and occasionally go well below the mean low tide for a few hours, leaving uncovered a wide variety of marine organisms that are not normally seen during a beach walk.
NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) is dedicated to protecting and preserving our nation's living marine resources through scientific research, management, enforcement, and the conservation of marine mammals and other protected marine species and their habitat. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, please visit our website at www.fakr.noaa.gov